BOSTON—When they are successful, the Boston Bruins are a delightful team to argue about.

Do they win because they are one of the best puck-possession teams in the NHL, with depth at every position that most teams can only dream about? Or do they win because they are a gritty bunch that plays fiery hockey, getting their opponents off their game and sparking debates about embellishment and hypocrisy?

The Bruins are a mathematical dream team, but also staggeringly human. That dichotomy makes them all the more interesting when they statistically dominate a game, the way they did on Saturday against the Pittsburgh Penguins, but wind up losing, 3-2, because they came up on the wrong end of the battle of intangibles.

Boston had a 40-24 shot advantage against Pittsburgh, including 37-16 at even strength. No Bruins line was more heavily on the puck than Brad Marchand, Patrice Bergeron, and Tyler Seguin, each of whom had a Corsi rating of better than plus-20 for the afternoon. Seguin's plus-25 was the game's best—he was on ice for 29 even-strength shot attempts by his team, and only four by the Penguins.

But then, there was Marchand trudging out of the box after a power-play goal by Jarome Iginla that snapped a third-period tie. The penalty that Marchand took was the kind that, at his best, he goads opponents into taking themselves. The "Little Ball of Hate" got two minutes for roughing when he ripped Jussi Jokinen's helmet off in a scrum at the Pittsburgh net.

"He kind of wrapped my head up there, and he'd been a little dirty all night, giving cross checks and to guys and sticking them," Marchand said. "I kind of took exception to it."

Later in the third period, with the Bruins down by two goals, Marchand—again, part of a line that was dominant at even strength—took himself out for two minutes by getting into a slashing duel with Joe Vitale, a trade the Penguins make every time.

"A good penalty is a good penalty, but when you get caught retaliating, it's obviously not a good penalty," Bruins coach Claude Julien said. "Some of those penalties, some of them are for laziness, and all of a sudden you've got to drag guys down. It depends on the situation. Obviously, we didn't have great penalties today, and certainly we didn't get the breaks the other way, but we're used to that."

The Bruins actually were getting the breaks, penalty-wise, in the early part of the game. Boston led 1-0 after Gregory Campbell drew a slash from Matt Cooke in the first period, and Marchand converted. But things turned in the second, after Cooke knocked Adam McQuaid to the ice with a hip check, and Zdeno Chara got himself sent to the box for a retaliatory roughing minor. The Penguins did not convert that power play, but the Bruins gave Pittsburgh three opportunities with the man advantage after that, and the two goals conceded by a struggling kill wound up deciding the game.

"Jokinen is the type of player, I mean, we took some penalties, but it's pretty obvious that it's a cheap shot from Cooke," Julien said. "Typical, same guy, he's got to go low and hit a guy right around the knee area, and turns his back. Same thing, Jokinen's got his stick high all game, and eventually the guys get it. You always hope you have people that will see those kind of things and call it right. That's not in our control."

That's only partly true. It is very much in the Bruins' control to avoid bad penalties, and it was not as if Saturday was the first time they had a problem. It was most glaring on March 4, when Canadiens defenseman Alexei Emelin cross-checked Seguin and Chara, the Bruins' captain and best defenseman, responded by racking up 17 minutes in penalties—an instigator, a fighting major, and a misconduct. Montreal scored the tying and winning goals while Chara was powerless.

Still, the Bruins could have survived Saturday's indiscretions had Tomas Vokoun not made 38 saves. If he had made 35 or 36, the Bruins would have been able to talk about how they rode a wave of emotion to victory, and Julien, beyond lamenting a lack of control over officiating, knew that full well.

"If we scored some goals today, I think everybody's walking out of here happy with the effort and the commitment that was put into this game," he said. "But when you don't score goals, it tarnishes a lot of things. That's the unfortunate part. II thought we came in with a lot of emotion, we were physical, we had lots of chances. I thought we played a pretty good game. ... We're talking about how good our team was today, but when you don't win, it's a loss, and we have to find ways to win hockey games."

The Bruins have been unable to do that in all three of their games with the Penguins this season, and on Saturday, they lost to a group without Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and James Neal. Not that a team that plays with Boston's kind of edge is going to sweat something like an 0-3 record.

"Nope, during playoffs it's a completely different story and regular season is completely out the window," Marchand said. "It doesn't matter where you finish in the standings, and it doesn't matter what previous records have been. It's a whole new season and it doesn't matter that they beat us more than we beat them this year, it's all about what happens in the playoffs."